Lena Dunham and Patti LuPone in Girls
Adam and Hannah exchange a quick phone call at the beginning of the episode, and things are looking up for the already happy couple: Hannah is waiting to interview Patti LuPone, and Adam is waiting at his callback for a Major Barbara revival on Broadway.
Adam gets the part, so obviously he stuffs an entire paper towel into his mouth before he screams for joy in the bathroom — a cute moment, though not particularly effective at muffling sound. He even makes a friend at the audition and grabs a ride on his motorcycle. (Have we ever seen Adam actually make a friend before?)
Major Barbara is an interesting choice for Adam’s first Broadway play: In the George Bernard Shaw production, a woman in the Salvation Army becomes disillusioned with the charitable organization when they accept donations from an armaments manufacturer and a whiskey distiller.
Thematically, it mirrors Hannah’s position at GQ. Two weeks ago, Hannah was bemoaning the fact that she was sacrificing her artistic craft to write advertorial content. This week, she’s psyched to interview Patti LuPone — and even more excited when she gets her first check and realizes it’s “more than her rent.” She immediately goes to Intermix to spend her extra cash on a dress she sees in the window. Hannah has become complacent with her job. And while on one hand, her complaining about a spot at GQ was spoiled, irritating and hard to watch, the writers have made sure that the advertorial issue stays in the backdrop backdrop.
Take Hannah’s actual meeting with Patti. The interview is sponsored by a medicine for low bone density; Patti, however, doesn’t have osteoporosis. She and Hannah decide to just lie and say Patti has had osteoporosis for about five years and takes the medicine. They also decide to give her a fictional French bulldog. Maybe it’s just because I am a writer, but I think this is supposed to make us very uncomfortable.
Hannah and Patti get offtrack when Adam calls Hannah to tell her the good news. Hannah relays the info to her interviewee, who warns her about Adam’s move to Broadway: “He’s going to need you to support him and forgive him because he’s going to be an a**hole,” Patti tells Hannah. She says that he will likely have sex with all of his cast mates as well as fans. Hannah tries to convince Patti that Adam is too weird-looking for that, but Patti argues, “There’s a lot of weirdos out there, honey. The elephant man got laid a lot.”
For the rest of the episode, Hannah’s friends either tell her that the play is going to drive a wedge between her and Adam or she imagines that that’s what they are implying. As she tells her coworker: “Patti LuPone just really f***ed with my head.” But things aren’t all that bad: Hannah gets to write something about the Gramercy Park Hotel and uses the opportunity to check into a big suite, invite all her friends over and throw Adam a party.
As well as Hannah and Adam are doing, Marnie continues to struggle. She runs into an old coworker in a yogurt shop who informs her that she is opening her own art gallery in NoHo. When Marnie subtly tries to offer her help and offer a hug, she gets rejected. (It’s awkward.) Marnie heads over to Ray’s place with a box of pizza to complain about her day, but Ray interrupts her to tell her that he wants a real girlfriend and can’t be with Marnie anymore. Marnie quickly dismisses her dumping: “You can’t break up with me, Ray. I don’t care about this. I wouldn’t be eating pizza in front of you if I actually liked you.”
But of course she does actually like Ray — or at least she likes being attached to someone — because when she shows up at the Gramercy, she’s upset.
Meanwhile Jessa is bored out of her mind at the children’s store until her old friend from rehab shows up (the friend is literally much older than her — not just a friend from the past). “I walked all the way to the address that you gave me, and I even threw little stones at your window until some teeny, tiny little moppet opened up, looked out and said, ‘Are you there to rape me?'” Even when Shoshanna’s lines are being relayed secondhand, they brighten up the episode.
Jessa and her rehab buddy then do a lot of cocaine together. They show up at the hotel high, and Hannah concludes that maybe they shouldn’t have taken Jessa out of rehab after all.
Jessa’s friends show a shocking lack of concern about her relapse. But, as we learned last episode, they’re all terrible friends, so what else were you really expecting?
Some tension begins to build between Hannah and Adam when Adam brings his new Broadway friend, Desi, to the hotel room. Desi had a small role on One Tree Hill and tells moving anecdotes and strums away at his guitar. Elijah and Shoshanna sigh. Marnie sings along with him. Hannah rolls her eyes.
(Side note: Marnie gives Desi her email so she can Dropbox him her “latest attempts” at songwriting. We find out she has an AOL account. Really? AOL? Really? She uses Dropbox but doesn’t have a Gmail account? Does she still use AIM? And she doesn’t know what paella is? This is a mess.)
Hannah and Adam end up alone in the hotel sharing a bath. Hannah mentions her dislike of Desi. Adam says that he’s not a fan of Elijah, who spent the entire night pestering him to try to get Broadway connections. They promise each other that the play won’t come between them — which probably means that it will — and Adam does a shockingly good rendition of his lines in a British accent. (For whatever reason it’s easy to think that Lena Dunham is just like Hannah and Adam Driver is just like Adam on this show. It was bizarre to see Adam act because it reminds you that Driver is an actor, not just some guy playing his goofball self.)
Choice Quotes:
Hannah:
“Blue Crush was such an important movie for women.”
Marnie:
“Every morning I wake up feeling really good, like I’m ready to take on the day. Like I want to say good morning to strangers — s*** I usually hate. And then without fail something happens at the yogurt shop that f***s up my whole day.”
Jessa:
“I’m not even attracted to you… I was wearing rehab goggles.”
Shoshanna:
“Literally, I swear to God, sometimes I think that I’m in The Truman Show, but it’s really just like a walking American Apparel ad, and I don’t even know it.” (Shoshanna’s saying this leads Jessa’s friend to believe that she’s high too. But nope, that’s just Shosh talking like a wind-up toy.)